Hey! I'm back! With that Super-Top-Secret project I mentioned! I'll be posting more information about it over the next couple of days because I don't have time to do it all at once. Everyone fine with that Good.

I haven't taken any pics yet, so I won't be posting anything else about this until I do.

Here's the video to tide you over until then.

And again, I apologize for the video quality. Still testing out a new-ish camera, and I didn't really plan the video. I just did whatever came to mind while taping (SD-Carding?) it.

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

What an awesome display! This is the kind of thing you should take to a LEGO event to show off to the world. No seriously, well done.

Thanks you!!! I would be taking it to BrickWorld Chicago this year, but I only have access to one NXT right now (my bros claimed the other one) and I gauged building something for the Sumo and the other events more fun. I do have 4 RCXs, but those could hardly compete with the robots there. Also, my supply of parts is somewhat limited.

mightor wrote:

Regarding the video, the quality of it is better than most I've seen out there. A few things though:

Try to keep the video length less than 10 minutes.

You can easily speed up the slow moving parts of the video x4 or x6, this makes it more interesting to watch, whilst still allowing people to follow what is going on.

Make a title thingy in your video with your name and the project and possibly date.

If you are using Windows, you can use Windows Live Movie Maker to do these things quite easily.

Yeah..... I was thinking of doing something like that, but I thought that it might take a bit to figure out, and as I said, I'm working on stuff for BrickWorld.

mightor wrote:

Fantastic job and thank you for using my drivers

Your welcome!

mightor wrote:

I'm happy to write about it on the ROBOTC project blog, just a few questions, though:

1. What motivated you to make this?

2. How long did it take?

3. Do you have any plans for future improvements or modifications?

4. What is the average air speed of a laden swallow?

1. I wanted to build a robot that was interactive and would entertain smaller kids, and be mechanically interesting to older ones, and even adults. Here's what happened: I planned for it to be able to "learn" where the colors were supposed to go. You could tell it if it put the brick in the right or wrong area until it learned where they all belonged. But, mechanical glitches in the construction that I didn't have time to fix prevented that from happening. I probably would have made another console with the other NXT with the yes/no buttons, and it could make sounds and use the display to interact.

2. Well, if you count total time it's been built, about two months. But, now here's the catch: I've really only been working on it for about one month, because I got sick twice over the last two months, so in total I was out of it for about a month.

EDIT: I forgot that during that month I was also working on other stuff. Probably about a week was lost to messing with my Boe-Bot and Pololu 3Pi.

3. I plan to revisit the same kind of concept, but with no deadline so that I can work out any problems that come up.

4. The average airspeed of a laden swallow is 42.

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

Sat Apr 28, 2012 9:48 am

mattallen37

Expert

Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2011 11:09 pmPosts: 184Location: Michigan USA

Re: Bucket 'o' Bricks Brick Sorter

Extremely awesome!

I especially like the gripper's combination of the springs, and a pneumatic cylinder. Very cool way of grabbing, lifting, and keeping constant pressure on the brick!

I especially like the gripper's combination of the springs, and a pneumatic cylinder. Very cool way of grabbing, lifting, and keeping constant pressure on the brick!

The sequential operation is very nicely done.

Thanks for sharing, you have given me inspiration

Thank you, Matt!! I was wondering if anyone would notice the gripper thing. [brag]I don't know about you, but I've never seen anything use that kind of combination before.[/brag]

P.S. I haven't forgot about posting the info. Getting it apart is taking longer than expected. But fear not! There will be something new by tomorrow!

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

Tue May 01, 2012 12:20 pm

vnguyen

Site Admin

Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:44 amPosts: 442Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: Bucket 'o' Bricks Brick Sorter

This looks great! Thanks for giving letting us put it up on the blog, and thanks Xander for putting the blog together

_________________Vu NguyenSoftware Training Development Team | WebmasterNeed more support? Email ROBOTC Support at support@robotc.net to put in a support ticket

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

The Pneumatic Station:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pre P.S. I realize that most of the close-up pictures are blurry. But, when I took them, on the camera display they didn't look blurry. Please forgive me.

The Pneumatic Station:

Power is supplied to the motor via this

which takes a Barrel-Jack power supply, in this case 12V 2A well regulated portable hard drive power supply. (Warning: overvolt motors at your own risk! ) puts it through a on-off switch, and then has a traditional LEGO electric plate from a broken RCX sensor port.

A converter cable is then connected to the power, and so to the PF-polarity switch pressure controller. Oh, also in this pic: the air release valve. Whoooooshhhh!

The switch is "on" when the cylinder is retracted. As the air pressure builds, the pneumatic cylinder will eventually overcome the force of the rubber bands at ~30 PSI, and thus push forward and turn the switch off, thus deactivating the motor. At ~20 PSI, the rubber bands pull the cylinder back down, and the process is repeated.

A converter cable connects the output of the PF-Switch to a RC-Motor running two small pumps:

Even though the pumps are small, since the motor is going at over 1000RPMs, it gets a lot of air out in a hurry. The performance is somewhat impeded with the switch, though. For some reason, it tends to flicker on and off rapidly, kind of like PWM. I don't know why. So, even now, it's not going full speed.

And, for your convenience, a conveniently placed air pressure meter placed at a convenient place so you can conveniently see the air pressure at your convenience!!!

Air tanks. Can't have pneumatics without air tanks!

The motorized pneumatic switch. It's really simple. Run the motor in one direction for half a second, run it in the other direction for half a second. With clutch gears, it's easy!!

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for..... The Claw!!!!

I think that the claw is the most unique thing about this. As you can see, it hinges on shock absorbers, which allows the cylinder to continue to move up after the claw is closed, thusly (as shown in the pic below) compressing the shocks, and raising the claw. I think that I'm the first person to do this. If any of you have seen it before, please tell me.

And (of course) a narrated video showing it all in action.

Next up: The Arm.

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

Wed May 02, 2012 4:37 pm

Spiked3

Expert

Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2012 3:10 pmPosts: 197

Re: Bucket 'o' Bricks Brick Sorter

I'm looking for an icon of me bowing down to the king, but don't see one. Picture it here.

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

Since smilies are images, you can do this with any one you want, as long as you have the URL.

Some more examples: , , and

_________________A.K.A. inxt-generationSelf-proclaimed genius, and future world dominator.My Brickshelf Folder"Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" - The Tenth DoctorBow down to Nikola Tesla, King of the Geek Gods.

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